Skip to main content

March Update

 Hey all,


Time for another update! I hope you've been well and enjoying this transition to Spring! 

It's been a really good semester here at UNT and TWU FOCUS. God has given us a solid community of about 200 people this year, which is a small slice in the grand scheme of things, but its a group of students who are coming and learning about Jesus and building relationship with people through discipleship and community. 

I've been spending a lot of time investing 1-1 in our student leaders and Denton pastoral staff team this year. Each week presents new opportunities to talk through their discipleship, talk through their leadership with students who come to their small group and who they meet 1-1 with. While our ministry does spend a lot of time on the "small side" of ministry, e.g. studying the Bible 1-1 and small groups, it's also important to give our students a large group experience every week that looks something like a church experience for them right on campus. We call these meetings Thursday Night Fellowship, and it gathers all of our UNT and TWU students together. Here's a few pictures from the large group side of our ministry

Our fellowship meetings consist of worship, a sermon, and time vision casting for them to meet with students and be involved in community. Here's a snapshot during worship. 

We had a hangout after our fellowship where students ate oatmeal and listened to live jazz by some our musician students. It was a great time. 

Our worship band preparing for our fellowship meeting

We've been having trouble getting a room on campus this past year, but God provided for us with finally finding a good room, so an answered prayer there!


Prayer requests:

- For our relationship with the campuses we work on. They can sometimes be frustrating and hard to deal with but we want to maintain good working relationships with them despite that. We are committed to be present on campus with the students. 

- For this season of my job and ministry, I need prayer for wisdom and energy. Leading a team of staff people is new and challenging still, along with having a baby. Prayers for this exciting and difficult time are very appreciated. 


My favorite recent photo of Jude. He's 9 months now! Crazy how fast it's going. 

May you have a blessed and flourishing life as you follow God and love people around you. 

Ryan Bristow

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

May

Wisdom Hey all!  I wanted to do something a little bit different this month. I've talked about Pizza Theology on here a few times before, and we just had another one. This time I want to link this semester's talks and encourage you to listen! It's about a 4 hour time commitment, but they are broken up nicely for you based on where we split up the talks.  The wisdom literature is definitely not a topic you hear preached on or talked about most often in sermons, but I think they are incredibly timely and important for Christians in our current world. These books are challenging and will engage our theology in some really key ways for a culture that currently struggles with discernment and wisdom.  It was one of my favorite Pizza Theologies we have done so far so I hope you enjoy them! 1.  https://open.spotify.com/episode/0PfiIl6DRD5lBBJuAZUPuN?si=4b-sH9M4TCqx3T49khY-ew 2.  https://open.spotify.com/episode/5hUc0sYZ4cLZYRkcE03FMh?si=e43My2gBS0mBtzKUdmLIUQ 3.  https://open.spoti
Post a Comment
Read more

August

A little different sort of update this month. Coming to you from Kimsey's Coffee in Argyle today. One of my favorite little "offices" for getting things done. It's an odd building, designed to look something like a cross between a hobbit house and a European hunting lodge. (As best as I can tell anyways). "Why don't you just work from home?" Jude thinks that me being at home but working and not playing with him is an extremely unsuitable arrangement. So here I am! Plus they have pretty good coffee.  Kimsey's Sometimes someone who is really unfamiliar with what a campus minister does will really dig in and ask, yeah but like what do you DO? It's usually those moments that I'm reminded how strange my job can be. I'm a pastor, but my congregation changes significantly every year. This month, we're really working  on expanding our social media/advertising for this next year. So I'm a graphic designer/marketer this summer? Sometimes be
Post a Comment
Read more

July

 Hello all! Just finished the first half of summer. Despite the sweltering heat, we are all mostly intact. Only one of our staff's A/C's has busted. Not bad.  We're fundraising whatever amount of our support is still not up to our budget over the summer so please be praying for that! God provides and we're just looking for the right people to connect with who would want to support the mission of reaching college students. Let me know if there's anyone who would be interested in hearing from me! Thank you for all of you who support this mission month after month or year after year. Your support is life changing! We're doing an 8 week study on preaching over the summer with our Denton Staff, and reading a book called Between Two Worlds by John Stott. It's been an excellent read, and I love that we get some time in our schedule over the summer to do some more broad prep work like this, and we're hoping this will only help elevate our preaching game to reach
Post a Comment
Read more